The Ebook Market is Booming

The burgeoning ebooks industry continues to build momentum, and Amazon’s Kindle remains the driving force. Kindle ebook sales on Amazon recently surpassed those of paperbacks, barely six months after they had eclipsed all hardcover sales. The company reported in January that it sold 115 Kindle ebooks for every 100 paperbacks sold in 2010, and three times the amount of hardcovers. The next-generation Kindle will include page numbers to match print editions of ebooks, improved interfaces for magazines and newspapers, and new social features for rating ebooks and sharing notes and highlights with friends (see http://wsm.co/fGEeIe). While creating virtual havoc for publishing traditionalists, the rapid ascent of ebooks has spawned a fertile new industry for opportunistic Web professionals.